


A Vestige

by mrecookies



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrecookies/pseuds/mrecookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's difficult to move on when things from the past keep popping up in your head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Vestige

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kissoffools for the 2011 npmexchange at Livejournal; prompt used was [Remember by Christina Rossetti](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174266).

zero - the present  
  
Arthur's shirt is clean, ironed, but there's a niggling feeling of wrongness in the back of her mind, and no matter how hard she tries to deny it access, it surges forward anyway.  
  
"Are you all right?" he asks gently.  _Wrong._  
  
Ariadne inhales deeply ( _wrong_ ) and summons a fake smile of porcelain and lies as she looks up at the man across the table from her. "Yes. I'm good."  
  
"That's good." And he takes her hand and she wants to scream in frustration but she bites her lip instead.  _("Love, don't do that," he said, running his thumb across her bottom lip. "I'll do it for you." He laughed cheekily at her expression and then kissed her mouth when she'd opened it to protest.)_  
  
She stares determinedly at her coffee, willing the aroma to overpower Arthur's clean smell.  
  
It doesn't.

 

 

*

 

  
one - one month ago  
  
She knows. She knows and yet she doesn't understand. She can't because even though Cobb and Arthur tell her the facts of what had happened to him, it doesn't make an iota of sense.  
  
So she sits dumbly at the table, ignoring Yusuf's attempts to engage her in small talk.  
  
"She's in shock, Dom. We need to settle this ourselves." Arthur's voice cuts through the haze of the day as efficiently as his bullets do his targets. Ariadne wonders briefly if the death was quick and if her… their forger hadn't suffered much. Whether he'd died with a joke on his lips, taunting death and life and rules and danger till the end.  
  
 _"Rules are meant to be broken, love. Bent this way and the other until they snap. Because it makes no sense to restrain a man - or woman - in cages when they have the ability to pick the lock." He smiled at her confused yet amused expression. "I am able to wax philosophical, you know? Not just a pretty face and a smashing body."  
  
She blushed and hated herself for it._  
  
Danger had taken its revenge through the means of people that Arthur described as formidably cruel, people that Eames had crossed while on his independent project away from the team. Away from her.

 

 

*

 

 

two - six months ago  
  
Cobb always looks amused when she turns up at his door for news of the forger. Even though she pretends to be casual, she's never been that good of a liar.  
  
 _"So, uh, Dom, have you heard from the others?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Oh, you know. The others. I've been so busy with the internship these days-"  
  
"Arthur's in Mombasa and Yusuf is with him. They're testing out something for a job coming up. Saito's not kept in touch recently but that might have something to do with him going into the airline industry? And Eames hasn't been keeping in touch at all. Mixed up in some ragtag business, I suppose."_  
  
But somehow he's here, right in the doorway of her apartment in London, dressed in a crumpled shirt and slacks and still looking…  
  
She adds a few more wrinkles to his shirt when she rushes to hug him.  
  
"Got an itch to scratch, sweetheart?" He drawls into her ear and she shivers slightly, not letting go of him. Not letting him let go of her.  
  
Then Eames is pressing her into the mattress and she arches and he bends so deeply and softly into her until she's nothing but a voice crying out into the shadows of his shoulder.

 

 

*

 

  
three - eleven months ago  
  
"I can't commit," he says, after he regains his breath. "You need to know that."  
  
She's lying on his chest, still panting slightly. "I know."  
  
She knows, but she doesn't understand. But she understands the way his hands fumble to find hers in the dark, the way their skin moves slickly in the summer heat together, the way they both ended up in Ariadne's bed after an innocent dinner party turned from reunion to staring competition to heated friction.  
  
"Saito's going to be furious," she laughs, remembering how the businessman had shot them a disapproving look from across the living room as they left the loft.  
  
"Saito's a gentleman. He understands the birds and the bees, and that men and women such as you and me have certain needs that heed no man-made call. Even if that call consisted of rich food and good wine."  
  
"Am I supposed to take that as a compliment that you chose me above pizza and beer?"  
  
He pauses to gauge her response. "Yes, yes, you should, love."

 

 

*

 

 

four - sixteen months ago  
  
"It's been great knowing you, Mister Eames." Cobb has left with his children, and the three remaining members meet briefly to bid adieu.  
  
"Likewise," he answers, eyes twinkling. "I do hope that your studies go well and that you've taken away valuable lessons in not being like Arthur and being like me."  
  
Arthur scowls at the forger, who brushes it off in slight amusement.  
  
"Goodbye Ariadne," he says, shooting Eames a glare.  
  
She nods and smiles, and can't help but remember the brief kiss on the job that failed to distract the projections.  
  
"I have to go. Appointment with some very important bastards." Eames breaks the sudden lull in conversation, glancing at his oversized watch. "M'lady," he says, bowing mockingly in her direction before leaving.  
  
She doesn't think she'll see him again.

 

 

*

 

 

five - one year later  
  
It hits her like a train when she spots a shade of him in the middle of London.  
  
The clothes don't match, and neither does the walk.  
  
But the smirk, the careless quirk of the mouth… it jolts through her mind and she suddenly recalls the smell of his shirt and the way he used to breathe and the touch of a thumb on her lips, and she inhales a sharp breath as, yes, she registers the faint taste of beer and cigarettes in the air…  
  
The figure shifts into the crowd and no, she loses the smell of his shirt and of him and she can't seem to get the rhythm of his breath quite right anymore, and it's her own thumb that's brushing across her mouth.


End file.
